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prostitute.
    As we walked to the backyard of Annie’s former lodgings, there was a grim sense of foreboding. Constable Fletcher guided me to where her body had lain, discovered by a resident of number twenty nine.
    “’Er throat was sliced wide open and the poor woman’s abdomen was open wide. ‘e’d cut ‘er so bad that the intestines were out, ‘anging over her shoulders they were as she lay in a pool of blood. There weren’t no sign of the woman’s uterus, neither.”
    “Are you a resident of the area, Constable Fletcher?” I enquired politely.
    “Nah, not from this neck of the woods. I was born in Mile End, I was. We ain’t ‘ad no victims down there.”
    It was as if he possessed a sense of pride the gruesome murders had been contained, that the problem belonged only to the people of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Yet, a grain of truth lay in his words, for the residents in west London were no more fearful of recent events in east London than they were of a fly intruding into their dining room. There was, I concluded, a true sense of detachment broken only by the experience of standing so close to where he had struck.
    Prostitutes, harlots or women of ill repute, I had encountered them along the way. From the high class courtesans of Roman times to the street walkers of Victorian London.
    Ladies of the night that pleasured men who might otherwise forced themselves on their wives, men who suffered loneliness and those with perversities too severe to disclose-except to prostitutes. They fulfilled desires and I was certain there was many a wife relieved her husband’s needs were being met elsewhere.
    The services these ladies offered may have been judged harshly by puritans and the like, but no matter what, they did not deserve to suffer in such a terrible manner; the killer needed to be stopped.
    “Mr. Ortiz, sir. Sir,” Constable Fletcher was calling me, but I had been taken up with my thoughts.
    “Mr. Ortiz!”
    “Yes, Constable, forgive my rudeness, but I was thinking of something.”
    “Penny for yer thoughts?” he asked.
    “That Annie knew her killer.”
    “We don’t ‘ave any evidence of that, sir. In fact, we’ve got very little.”
    “Did you attend any of the crime scenes directly after?”
    “Only Annie. It was the worst site of me life I can tell yer, made me proper sick it did.”
    I needed to return home and confide in Roderick, whom I was certain would be pleased. I was embarking on what I set out to do, but I was overly concerned of the outcome.
    “If you don’t mind my saying, proper mad it is, gentlemen like you in Whitechapel walking on yer tod. The robbers will have yer before you could blink and there ain’t always a copper to call for.”
    “I understand your concern, Constable, but I have no fear, they can do me no harm.”
    He looked at me in a strange way and I knew he mistook my fearlessness for false bravado. Who could blame him for perceiving me that way? It was the impression I gave.
    I, in turn, studied the young man before me. Barely in his twenties, his face yet to be contoured by life and its worries. I doubted he was skilled yet in the art of meanness or prejudice, perhaps he never would and, in turn, become a fine person with good qualities. It was at that precise moment I felt a pang of envy. He was what I wanted to be. Young blood coursing through his veins, about to set out on the journey of life, maturing into adulthood with a wife and children. Becoming a grandfather with wise words for the grandchildren who will sit on his knee. Dying safe and warm, surrounded by cherished loved ones. The dream of a woman to love and comfort me remained a desire that did not diminish. But the end of my life eluded me and I had come to accept that it was to be my penance, to suffer in uncertainty.
    “I ‘ave to get back to the station sir, can I drop you somewhere?”
    “I would like to go to the Old Bell Tavern in Fleet Street, if that will not be an